Monday, May 8, 2017

May 8 Radio History

➦In 1899...voice actor Arthur Q. Bryan was born in Brooklyn. He is remembered best for his longtime recurring role as the wis ecracking Dr. Gamble on the NBC radio comedy Fibber McGee and Molly and for creating the voice of the Warner Brothers cartoon character Elmer Fudd. He was also the voice of Floyd Munson the barber and crony of NBC radio’s The Great Gildersleeve. He had a recurring role on The Halls of Ivy on both radio & TV. Bryan suffered a fatal heart attack Nov. 18 1959 at age 60.

➦In 1915...actor John Archer was born in small town Nebraska. He is best remembered as the radio voice of Lamont Cranston, The Shadow, for a year in the 1940’s. Later in life, as a resident of Greater Seattle he was a founding member of REPS, the Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound. He succumbed to lung cancer Dec. 3 1999 at age 84.

➦In 1936...radio &TV talk show host Tom Snyder was born in Milwaukee. He is best remembered for The Tomorrow Show, which followed the Tonight Show on NBC television in the late 1970s and ’80s, and The Late Late Show, following David Letterman on CBS in the 1990s.

Tom Snyder

Snyder had loved radio since he was a child and at some point changed his field of study from pre-med to journalism. He once told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tim Cuprisin that broadcasting became more important to him than attending classes, and he skipped a lot of them. Snyder began his career as a radio reporter at WRIT (unrelated to the present-day FM station) in Milwaukee and at WKZO in Kalamazoo (where he was fired by John Fetzer) in the 1950s. For a time he worked at Savannah, Georgia, AM station WSAV (now WBMQ).

After moving to television in the 1960s, he was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Cleveland (now WKYC-TV) and, after a 1965 station switch, Philadelphia, and WNBC-TV and WABC-TV in New York City. He talked about driving cross country in an early Corvair from Atlanta to Los Angeles around 1963, where he landed a news job at KTLA, then on to KNBC-TV, also in Los Angeles, where from 1970 to 1974 he was an anchor for the 6 p.m. newscast working with KNBC broadcaster Kelly Lange, who was then a weather reporter before serving as a long-time KNBC news anchor. Lange later became Snyder's regular substitute guest host on the Tomorrow program, prior to the hiring of co-host Rona Barrett in the program's last year. Even after attaining fame as host of Tomorrow, Snyder kept his hand in news anchoring with the Sunday broadcasts of NBC Nightly News during 1975 and 1976.

He died July 29 2007 from complications associated with leukemia at age 71.

➦In 1940...singer/actor Ricky (Eric Hilliard) Nelson was born in Teaneck New Jersey.

He began in show biz as a child actor, playing himself on radio on his family’s long-running sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. When the show moved to TV he began singing at the end of each show, establishing himself as a record star. Hits include I’m Walkin’, Poor Little Fool, Lonesome Town, Never Be Anyone Else But You, Travelin’ Man, and Garden Party.

He, his fiancee & 5 others were killed in a plane crash Dec 31, 1985 enroute to a New Year’s Eve performance in Dallas. Rick was 45.

➦In 1959...the final broadcast of “One Man’s Family” was heard on NBC radio after being on the air 27 years. The Carleton E. Morse creation had completed 3,256 episodes since its beginnings in San Francisco back in 1932.➦In 1962…Beatles manager Brian Epstein had a chance meeting with engineer Ted Huntly at a London record store. After Epstein related his discouragement about the Decca label rejecting the band, Huntly suggested he send a demo recording of the Beatles to EMI and, in particular, to one of their producers, George Martin.

George D Hay

➦In 1968...George D. Hay died at age 72.

He was the originator of the Grand Ole Opry broadcasts over station WSM in Nashville. The program, originally called the “Barn Dance,” was first broadcast on November 28th, 1925.

Hay was born in Attica, Indiana. In Memphis, Tennessee, after World War I, he was a reporter for the Commercial Appeal, and when the newspaper launched its own radio station, WMC, in January 1923, he became a late-night announcer at the station. His popularity increased and in May 1924 he left for WLS in Chicago, where he served as the announcer on a program that became National Barn Dance.

On November 9, 1925 he moved on to WSM in Nashville. Getting a strong listener reaction to 78-year-old fiddler Uncle Jimmy Thompson that November, Hay announced the following month that WSM would feature "an hour or two" of old-time music every Saturday night. He promoted the music and formed a booking agency.

➦In 1970...The Beatles released the "Let it Be" album to radio.

➦In 1982...Ron Lundy does last regular show at 77 WABC, prior to format change to Talk.

Ron was on the air in New York City starting in September 1965, first on the overnight shift at WABC before shifting to middays in 1966. He remained at WABC right up until its last day as a music station on May 10, 1982.

In February 1984, Lundy resurfaced at New York's oldies station WCBS 101.1 FM in the mid-morning slot, following former WABC colleague Harry Harrison. According to program director Joe McCoy, the station created the slot especially for Lundy, reducing other shifts from four hours to three.

Lundy retired from WCBS-FM on September 18, 1997.

He passed away at the age of 75 in Bruce, Mississippi on May 15, 2010.